We Can Be Heroes
by moonswirl
Summary: Prelude #14 to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, coming in July. (See author's note inside) An AU story set across the Arrowverse. In this installment: Cait Snow's been fascinated with the breach above her city since she was a kid, and she's had an ally in her curiosities.


_**A/N:** I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes._

 _Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days._

 _The story this will all be leading to, **Once More Unto the Breach** , is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!_

 _Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!_

* * *

 **WE CAN BE HEROES  
** _Prelude to_ _ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH  
_ (14 of 24)

 **Location:  
** **THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH  
** _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

It would not be found that the majority of the population understood how it came to be that their world came to behold any number of superpowered men and women, metahumans as they were called. Even those of them who were concerned didn't always know, didn't always understand what had come to pass. As far as they were concerned, there had always been something in them, just waiting for that one instant, that triggering moment, before all of a sudden… boom. Powers. Heroes… villains… If there was any truth to this, well, most would not question it… and others wouldn't encourage thinking any further. But then there was another answer, whether or not they could set it in stone as The Truth, continued to be an item in contention.

If you knew about the breach, if you knew about what waited on the other side of that breach, well… that was one thing. But here again there would be a split path before you, like the one created out of the question of the metahumans' origin. You could go on the assumption that the breach, the other Earth, had always been waiting there over your head, or you could take the other fork in the road and realize that it had come into existence, not two decades prior. And if you did that, you could posit the idea that, whether it had occurred naturally or been brought to occur by a manmade event, it was the creation of the breach which had in turn brought the metas into being.

Cait Snow was one such person, though she didn't throw this fact around to any and all who might listen, which had always been the case, even before the day that changed her life.

Science had held a special place in her life for about as long as she could remember. It had never ceased to fascinate her, the thought that anything she witnessed, in body both healthy or ill, in nature clear or thunderous, world natural or super, human or meta, could be a question with an answer, and if she set herself to it, she could find that answer for herself. It had all started with the breach.

She was ten years old, already on her answer seeking journey through the building blocks of the world, the day she'd looked into the distance at just the right moment, just as a strange rippling opened in the air and a man stepped out from it, looking around and then running away even as the ripple disappeared. He hadn't seen her, but she'd seen his arrival, and that was all she needed to become instantly taken with the biggest question her young mind had yet to face. It didn't matter how big the question though. There was no question without an answer. She would find it, no matter how long it took.

It had taken years, of careful investigation, of seeking, and meeting, researching, and researching, and researching some more, and bit by bit she had come closer to the answer. She wasn't alone, others were as aware and as intrigued as she was, and they had done their own research, and they had helped her take steps closer to her answer. She came to know about the breach, about the other Earth. She came to know about metahumans, about aliens, beings from neither Earth who now walked upon one or the other. But they weren't the thing that caught her attention once again. The existence of the breach had answered her original question, but now it was something else that lit her imagination. Metahumans…

In all the time which had come and gone since she'd first seen a breacher she had grown, out of childhood and into adulthood, but in between there had been adolescence, and that was when she'd first met Ronnie Raymond.

She might never have given a moment's notice if he hadn't quickly shown himself to share some of that same spirit of curiosity she'd carried in her mind for as long as she could remember. He had seen her one day, and where every other kid near about her age who would have seen her as she'd been – bent over her notebook and scribbling, emerging only long enough to gather a soil sample and pocket it – would have either laughed or called her names, he had walked up and gathered up some of that same soil in the palm of his hand. She'd stopped and looked up at him and, well… well, she was fifteen years old, what else was going to happen? She'd caught a glimpse of those eyes, that face, and she'd just… gulped, until her mind had shaken off the fog and she'd managed to ask him what he thought he was doing.

"You took some first," he'd shrugged, still staring at the soil, moving his fingers about to let pool into his palm. "Is it poisoned?" he'd asked, and there it was, in his voice: intrigue, wonder. Call it a side experiment, but she'd told him why she'd taken the sample, and what she intended to do with it, to see what he would say in return. He'd looked up at her, and he'd smiled at her… for the first time. "Oh, you've seen them, too, haven't you?" Well… if that wasn't going to keep her attention, what would? And then, the words that would seal the deal: "Let me show you something."

He had been intrigued by all of it, too, the breach, the metas, maybe not in the same way she had, but in his own way, and in a matter of weeks it became clear that her way and his way were… Well, his way of explaining it would have been that one was peanut butter and the other was jelly. Each one great and able to stand in their own merit, but when joined together, they were pushed into a brand-new level of greatness. Whichever way you explained it, once they'd started working together, they'd made leaps and bounds in their progress, in their research. They were finding small bits of answers, but it always, always felt like they were still missing something. Months had gone by, years… He'd asked her to marry him, she'd said yes.

Then, one day, Ronnie had manifested himself as a metahuman.

He'd called her, his voice stuck somewhere between panic and fascination, and begged her to come and find him… at the park… hiding in a maintenance cabin. He told her to bring her car… and the largest blanket she had on hand. Now, she loved a puzzle as much as the next, no, many times as much as the next person, but this one was stumping her. And when she arrived and found him, she knew she could have run over that call forever and she would never have predicted what she found.

When she'd opened the door to the cabin, it was dark inside, but she saw his hand, just peeking out from behind a stack of boxes, and thinking the worst she had rushed over, taken hold of his hand, even as his head popped out from behind those boxes… on the other end of the cabin, so it couldn't have been his…

"Don't freak out," he'd instructed, even as she'd looked down, really looked, up his hand, and his arm… and his arm… still his arm… His arm, his _arms_ were like a pair of hoses, heaped and twisted, stretched several feet long between his hands and shoulders, as though someone had grabbed on to his hands and pulled and his arms, rather than forcing his body to follow had instead stretched out to make up the difference, and now… She'd let go of his hand, covering her mouth so she wouldn't get any bright ideas like shouting, or screaming. "I can explain… Actually, I can't, but I can tell you how it happened. We should get away from here first. Did you bring the blanket?" It was to cover him up, she understood now… once they could somehow gather his arms.

She'd helped him sneak over to the car as best she could, and once he was heaped into the backseat, she'd gotten back behind the wheel and they were headed home. Finally he started to tell her how it had all happened. He'd been walking through the park to go and pick up lunch from their favorite food truck when he'd heard a scream. He'd only just had time to turn around and he'd seen him. A boy, no more than seven or eight, who'd climbed high in a tree, until a branch had given out. He was too far away, just too far, there was no way, and still the reflex had been to run for him, to reach for him, to break his fall.

And the next thing he knew, his arms had shot out, and out, and out… and caught the boy, stopped his fall, set him to the ground. The boy, maybe out of shock, had taken no time to stop and understand what had happened. He'd just run off on his way, leaving Ronnie with a pair of arms several times longer than he was tall and not looking about to return to their original length. With little other option coming to him, he'd retreated to the cabin and called her, which had been an exercise in patience with the state of his arms.

Once back in the safety of their own home, they had been able to look at the situation and find a way to help stabilize him. Soon, his arms had been able to shrink back down. Better yet, he had started to master this new ability of his. And now they knew what Ronnie himself had not known. He was a meta. There was not one thing that could have happened to him, nothing he'd come in contact with, that would explain it, and in growing more familiar with this change in him they had expanded their understanding, their knowledge, and the possibility that this could all be connected back to the breach…

Weeks later, they had been married. She'd placed that ring on his finger, all the while knowing he was thinking the same thing she was thinking, both of them trying to keep a straight face as they imagined the looks on their guests' faces if his fingers or his arm started to stretch. They got through it without any stretchy incidents, only cheers, and flowers, and their first kiss as husband and wife.

There had never been any doubt that Ronnie would take this power he had been granted and put it to good use, helping the people of the city. And this had brought them in contact with a few others, like-minded in this endeavor. It would grow to take precedence over the time they dedicated to their research, but she would never fault him for it. There was no denying the importance of what their team did. Well… _they_ did. She stood as the lone one among them without metahuman abilities to assist her, and she couldn't say that she would have been much at ease out there with them anyway. But she did more than enough to provide her part of the effort. She tended to them, she did research, and she kept on learning. And she'd finally come to understand what she had started trying to understand that day when she was ten years old.

The breach had been born out of some incident… and so had the metas…

Their abilities, if they had been affected, may have remained dormant but then sooner or later they would awaken…

They wouldn't know they had them, wouldn't have known they were different until then… until a day that would change their lives.

It often happened that their team's activities would bring them in contact with breachers, that they would be left to attend to some mess or another. This in turn had put them in contact with both ARGUS and the crew of the Waverider. They didn't stop them from doing their part, so long as they understood that they could only go so far before ARGUS or its associates would step in and take over, and that was fine. The cooperation had been a beneficial one, for all involved. Every so often, some of them would call on her, and on her own very human abilities.

That day, it was the Waverider crew who had called on her, and she'd gone to find the ship where they had landed it. She'd come aboard, and once she knew what they needed from her she had gotten to work. What she didn't know, what the crew didn't know, was that there was a stowaway on the ship with them. A breacher who had managed to come on, undetected, back on Breach Earth. Cait had been the first to become aware of his presence, when he had snuck out of hiding and there she'd been, working. She'd heard a noise and looked up, and then they'd locked eyes, at a standstill. Who would move first? What would they do when they did? Questions, she could do questions, because they all had answers, and oh these questions… None of the answers sounded good.

Ralph Dibny was one of the Waverider's crew who had come from Breach Earth, and he had been the one to welcome her to the ship that day. He had left her for a few minutes only to return to this standoff. He hadn't even looked up yet as he returned to her, so he hadn't seen a thing. But she had. The breacher had seen Ralph, and it was like time had slowed to a crawl, the instant she realized he was reaching for a weapon. All she'd thought was _I need to get out of here, Ralph needs to get out of here, we have to run, we have to…_

 _Run._ And she ran. She ran, and she grabbed Ralph, and then they were far across the ship, coming to a stop. Ralph had instantly doubled over and been sick, and she… she felt like she'd just swallowed a whole lot of caffeine, her hands were still shaking… No, not shaking, _vibrating._

"Wh… What just happened?" she'd breathed. Looking up to find a few of the others from the ship's crew stood there, staring at her. All she could think to say was that there was an armed stowaway.

Just like that, in a flash, she wasn't the same person who'd stepped on to that ship that day. She was a metahuman, like her husband, like the rest of her team. She had this power in her, and it was beyond all she could have expected. She still remembered returning home, finding Ronnie there, unaware of anything she'd just experienced. She'd looked so dazed, when she'd told him she had something to tell him, he'd jumped to the conclusion that she might have been pregnant. But she'd shaken her head, and then she'd decided the best thing to do was to just cut to the chase, literally. She'd run from the door across to the farthest point on the other side of the room, in what must have felt like the blink of an eye or two for him, a gust of wind sending many a thing flying up in the air as she passed. Ronnie's head had spun so fast to find her there, disheveled and wide-eyed, and it was as though she'd sent his words flying like so many bits of paper, he could only gape in awe.

She'd told him about what had happened on the ship, with the breacher, and how she'd saved Ralph… right before he'd lived up to his name. Ronnie, once he'd recovered from the shock, had been delighted, thrilled. She had powers! She was a meta, too! He was so excited, she couldn't be anything except excited, too. Once _she_ had gotten over the shock, too, it had started feeling good. _She_ saw it as even better means of getting to the bottom of her research. Only… only there was much more to it than that now. She couldn't ignore the fact that this power of hers could be helpful, very helpful. She couldn't just be the voice in her team's ears anymore. They needed her out there, with them.

And she'd done it, of course she had. The early days felt a lot like chaos, but then all she had to do was what she had always done. Questions and answers. Anything she couldn't do, that was a question, and she answered, and answered, and answered. And she did what her abilities had given her the ability to do. She helped people. She helped people, and she got to do it with her husband by her side, the pair of them a much different duo than what they'd been on the day they'd met, but with that same curiosity, and that same love.

They still found time to work on their research, the breach, the metas, and they were surer than ever of their hypothesis. Of course this opened up another fork in the road, more questions. If something, or someone, had caused the opening of the breach, the creation of this other Earth, and the advent of a wave of metahumans created, their abilities manifesting after a long dormancy… If something, someone had done this, then… Who had done it? How had they done it? What else could they do?

"Ah, there's that look again," Ronnie had smiled, looking at her, when she'd first brought this up to him. She'd smiled back, as he'd leaned over and kissed her. "That's my Caity Quick…"

 _THE END_

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 _Check out the next prelude, coming May 15th!_


End file.
